Eco-Friendly Innovations...cool one...

Disclaimer: I'm not rewriting this journal back but I just want to highlight what I considered as important innovations of all, besides it didn't stated there "Copyright.......". It's not a case of plagiarism but I think people like you have to know about these things. For me, it is so cool and I wished I would come up with an idea that one day enable people around the world to live a better, meaningful life.

Okie here it goes. I only picked a handful of innovations that I think helped a lot and which innovations would give huge impact to the society.

1.
Ambulances with Solar Panel

 

It all started with four entrepreneurs in Mumbai, India, who launched an ambulance company called 1298 (which happened to be the number you have to dial for service), a couple of years ago. To keep the equipment inside going on, the ambulance had to drive around, while giving free rides for the poor (isn't that wonderful!!!). The solar panel on the roof was installed in 2008 to power the equipment inside when the ambulance is not running, and an effective way to cut down on fuel and car emmisions. Wow!!!

2.

Foot-Pressure Pump

 

Lower-cost design and it sells at $30. $30, can you imagine that? Compare with other human-powered pumps that costs you around $100, no wonder this thing sold thousands since late 2007. This man in Myanmar used the foot-pump designed by several students taking a course at Stanford University called Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability. They came up with lighter foot-powered pump (similar to those used to refill your tyre tubes) that uses a simplified linkage between the treadles that sucks the water and pressurizes it. Great huh??? Never think about it though. And it looked great when you wanted to have a work out in the evening and at the same time watching over your crop.

3.

Solar-Powered Refrigerator

Developed by Promethean Power Mass of Cambridge, Massachusetts, this innovation, a solar-powered off-grid refrigeration system for chilling milk could benefit rural dairy farmers in India where electricity is unreliable. The farmers store the milk in the cooler's 500-liter tank. Then the dairy plants pick up the milk every other day instead of twice daily. This innovation is in the design of low-cost heat exchangers. The working prototype was built in Boston last year (2009) and now receives its first order from a large dairy in India. Cost: $9,000, but will save the dairy money due to reduce transportation costs and spoilage. Mmm, yummy...fresh, cool milk.

4.

Windbelt

You've heard of wind turbine generator, but how about windbelt? Yup, folks, windbelt, another solution to alternative energy invented by Shawn Frayne. His company, Humdinger Wind Energy, based in Hawaii, built the windbelt devices that harness wind moving across a tense membrane or belt and pull energy from the wind (I don't know exactly how this thing work). He believes his devices will deliver power for five cents per kilowatt hour (minus installation costs), which is about one third Californians pay for their electricity. As of now, he is currently in negotiations to license the technology to other companies for uses such as powering mobile towers, wireless routers and possibly power to the grid. Thinking of your own personal mobile wireless router that you could bring along anywhere with the above technology, now that's cool.

So folks, what are you waiting for??? Power those brains up, and get brainstorming, for your idea could crawl its way to become another solution towards better life. And better, you could establish a company based on your idea. Something to think off...

P.S: This article was taken from Forbes. I thought this innovations are cool, so I decided to base this post on it. Something for your to think...

Till next time...

Auf wiedersehn...

NEW AND HOT!!!

An unexpected turn of events that led to one another allow me to acquire what would I called "a great masterpiece". Want to know the story??? Scroll down, mademoiselle et monsieur.........

It began with a thought: I wanted to go to Queensbay.......blah, blah, blah...Okie before I crap any further, lemme just cut to the crap that I wanna crap about (credit to Syahmi for the word 'crap').

Okie, yesterday I was tutoring Marcela on C++ and it happened that she brought along her laptop. I asked for movies and she did gave me, however, unfortunately, the battery went out. But (there's always a but) not before she gave me The Vampire Diaries, which is a television series instead of a movie I was hoping to watch (she gave me Constantine but it stuck third-quarter through the film, dammit...). So I came back to my room and start to wikipedia-ing "The Vampire Diaries" and OMG for some reasons below:

i) The show is relatively new, aired on September 10, 2009 and in its 14th episode, first season so far, and I happened to have the first full 14 episodes...hahahahahahha

ii) It's about the life of Elena Gilbert, a resident of Mystic Falls, Virginia (fictional, of course) who falls in love with vampire brothers Stefan Salvatore and Damon Salvatore.

iii) What make this drama appealing to me is that it's not just the whole drama thingy between the aforementioned characters and their friends as well as other residents of Mystic Falls, but the town itself harbors a dark secret of its own: lair of vampires during its founding in the Civil War era (to be exact the founding date is 1864). The Salvatore brothers happened to live in this era too and it also happened that the two loved the same woman, Katherine Pierce.......

iv) .......which surprisingly looks similar to Elena Gilbert! And here where's the story get interesting: Katherine is a vampire, who turned both Salvatore into vampires too and it was also revealed that Elena is adopted by her parents, hence there is a possibility that she is a descendant of Katherine.

WOW. Well for me WOW. For those who are reading this, you might think I am nut over these things but, supernatural is my genre. And let see, TVD (The Vampire Diaries) got what I called the perfect ingredients: small, old town charms, add mysterious too, hot,sexy babe, and powerful vampires as well as lineages (don't ask) and like I said, it's different from any other supernatural based TV series; it focused more on the history of the town and its relation to the present day story rather than just high school teenage drama. It also attracted the largest audiences in the history of the network that aired it, CW Television Network since the network began in 2006. Oh, oh...did I mention witchcraft too???

So far, up until the 14th episode, besides the fact mentioned above, first season focused on Damon attempt to find Emily's crystal, a descendant of Elena's best friend, Bonnie as well as other vampires who wanted to find and resurrect Katherine. Wanna know more???You just gotta see it....ahhaa

From left to right: Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley), Elena Gilbert/Katherine Pierce (Nina Dobrev) and Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder)

Look at Nina above, isn't she hot!!!!!...Fuh, and it happened that the 15th episode is not gonna aired until March 25. WTF!!! Owh...have to wait for a month, and I'm dying to see her again....hahhahaa. Just kidding...

Until next time...

Au revoir...

Medley

The New Year songs fills the air. Splendid fireworks decorated the night sky. Shops, especially run by the Chinese, closed for the celebration of a new year. This is the usual scene whenever Chinese New Year comes around. Everyone celebrating it, including me, though I'm not Chinese (I looked like one, but it doesn't mean that I am Chinese). Guess that's the uniqueness living under one roof and one name, Malaysia. We get lots and lots of holiday due to our multiracial society, something that is often taken for granted. Anyhoo, Happy Chinese New Year and Happy Holiday to all my friends.

Chinese New Year in London's Chinatown...

I'm wikipedia-ing Chinese New Year, and I found this: "According to tales and legends, the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called the Nien (Chinese: 年; pinyin: nián). Nien would come on the first day of New Year to devour livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children. To protect themselves, the villagers would put food in front of their doors at the beginning of every year. It was believed that after the Nien ate the food they prepared, it wouldn’t attack any more people. One time, people saw that the Nien was scared away by a little child wearing red. The villagers then understood that the Nien was afraid of the colour red. Hence, every time when the New Year was about to come, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nien. From then on, Nien never came to the village again. The Nien was eventually captured by hong jun lao zu, an ancient Taoist monk. The Nien became hong jun lao zu's mount." Okie, so I C&P (that would be copy-and-paste), but it's for your reading pleasure, if you are reading my blog. We celebrated holidays a lot, but none of us never took the opportunity to ask how it came into being. We are always ignorant of history, something that most of us considered boring, but actually helped us a lot, if you know what I'm saying. Okie, Edy, stop the crap!!!

But this year CNY celebration is somewhat dreary, mainly due to the recession. To be honest, 2009/2010 is not the best term ever for me; everything is slow, everything is not right, and everything...everything...well, everything is bad. Convex 2009, is not the best compared to 2008/2009, TOT committee is not that good, well to be honest (again), I'm doubtful of the leadership capability of my director, and NRIC committee is not that cheerful as it used to be (2008/2009). Whenever we have free time, most of us (NRIC 2008/2009) would go to the Bilik Gerakan, either to wait for the next class, finish our assignments, lab reports, tutorial, etc, or we just wanna have fun. And for me, that moment is fantastic, to be able to spend precious time with my friends. And I missed the laughters that often fills the air of that room.

And how do I connect all of this to the economic recession??? Let us see:

The economic recession of late-2000s, which begins in December 2007 in the United States and with much intensity since September 2008, affected much of the world, plunging it into the greatest economic meltdown (is this the right thing to say???) since the Great Depression of the 1930s (which also drove the World War II). Malaysia, affected by the recession, has implement necessary steps in order to save what little of the economy we have (cewahh, ayat tu), hence laying off jobs and cut the budget. Budget cut means that companies are not able to support other activities other than their own, thus the word sponsorship does not exist in their account books...hehehe. And laying off jobs means that students nowadays, especially us, the undergraduates, have to study hard to achieve good results, hoping (as well as crossing their fingers) that jobs will be available to them once they graduated with Hons. So, putting all the pieces together, no sponsorship, no money, minimal things to do, no fun. Even Mark commented that their sponsorship for Convex '09 is not good. No jobs, study hard, no time to do fun things, no fun either. Huh...I hope you can see the link. Wow, imagine, how reckless and unsustainable lending practices resulting from the deregulation and securitization of real estate mortgages in the United States could lead to one another, like the book I read about climate change in Europe, which resulted in centuries of warm climate, good harvests and population growth. You got to admit even though we are continents apart, there are still things that links us to one another. One that I could think of: Facebook.

The new feature in Facebook is striking. I like it, centralised, although a bit confusing. It will take a while, before I can wind my way up in this new feature. The old one is easier to manage, i.e. (FYI, that means ib ed), the log out button is easier to find. Anyway, it's good, just good. Facebook is an integral part of our life. For me, I can't survive without knowing what's happening in Facebook. The problem is, I can't access it from my own room, due to the wifi connectivity here in Tekun. And that leads us to our next topic: Wifi connectivity in USM's Desasiswa. Okie, this topic might be a little sensitive to others, but hey, I have freedom to express my  thoughts and hence my words (the pact that I made a long time ago in my first post). To begin with, USM HOTSPOT IS SO BAD I CAN'T EVEN DOWNLOAD A 1.0 MB SONG!!! Just 1.0, that's all (there is a 1.0 MB song). And to top it all, the building structure, the low performance of my laptop, and other interference such as the networks between laptop used to play DoTA weaken or appear to weaken the signal, and that leads to zero Internet...huh. But now, USM have taken steps to ensure that every room have Internet connectivity, by installing some kind of router in every cluster of 4 rooms. And yet, the Internet connectivity is still weak, but don't judge others quickly. Besides, the system is still in its infancy, and the low Hotspot connectivity may be attributed to my weak-performance laptop. Time to get some formatting.

Speaking of formatting................hmm...I guess I better stop. The eyes are a bit heavy now...I better get some good sleep, which I'm struggling to have, since my body clock change.

Well, that's all...

ZzZZZzzzzz...

It's Over

After weeks of much hard work plus the stress involved, finally it’s over by the time that Prof. Omar Osman walked out from Dewan Budaya. As soon as he stepped out into the foyer, a relief filled my lung. Huh, the event has ended already. And it was great. Although there is technical difficulties here and there, Majlis Penjenamaan Sekretariat Sinar Perpaduan/Rukun Negara were successful and the sustainability theater “Ish..Ish..Ish..” was a box office one. The crowd’s big applause yesterday was an indication how much the theater captured the attention of the whole crowd especially the V.I.P., Prof. Omar Osman and the Pemangku Pengarah Jabatan Perpaduan Negara & Integrasi Nasional Pulau Pinang, En. Saidi bin Midin. The message is deep but somehow they can capture it. It was so exciting, and although a bit nervous and inexperienced in this whole “pengarah projek” thing, it’s still a blastful one. And special thanks to the committee and the university and the government for their big support, especially money in order for this event to be a successful one. Just a simple event, but it is enriching.

That’s the good part. Now for the bad part; apart from the apparent technical difficulties (it’s not a big deal actually, but it kinda make me embarrassed somehow…), yesterday is TOO MUCH HECTIC. Long story short: 3 tests, the whole day event and NRIC meeting at night.

The long story: I have MAT263 (Probability Theory) test at 10 a.m. and I don’t even study for it, given that I have full rehearsal the yesterday’s yesterday night (Monday night) and I have to finished my text before the event (which I managed to finish a few hours before the event, more like an hour before the event) and I’m staying at PUMA late at night until 4 a.m. and I have to supervise the placement of the sculpture at Pohon Perpaduan. After 4 a.m., me and a couple of friend went back to our own desa, take my bath and sleep for four hours before waking up at 9 a.m., went to DK V and guess what? I am going to get zero for the test because most of my answers are blank. Nada! Zip! Shit! This is the first time that I went for a test and didn’t even study for it. And it is a mistake that I’m going to learn. And I have to escape the Persidangan meja bulat: “Hala Tuju Perpaduan dalam kalangan Warga Kampus” which is held at Konkos at the same time I’m having my test.

Finish my test, I went to the Computer Sciences School, to meet my lecturer, Dr. Yap, see if he could postpone my test to other day, and my intuition was right. He won’t let me, because I told him at the last minute, and he said if you want to score for the test, do properly for next Test 2, which mean that for any mark that I scored in Test 2 will be the mark for my Test 1. Nothing beats experience: Test 2 is generally harder than Test 1, and I doubt my ability to get higher mark for the next test. So, I strike a deal with him, I said I wanted to do the test at 6 to 7 p.m. and he gave me green light. Yes! One problem solved, another came up. Now I have to supervise the whole event and finished my text, the last obstacle.

I’m not really good with words but when idea came in, I wrote like a storm. Seriously!!! After the deal, I went to PUMA, finished my text, went to the banquet and entertain the guest from IPT North Zone. And one thing: my communication skills are not that good, so it’s kinda difficult to entertain them, but still it’s fun talking to a lot of people. And finally after much hard work, the event started. First En. Saidi came, and we escort him to the VIP room; next came Prof. Omar Osman, and still we have to wait for Pengarah Bahagian Pembangunan Lestari dan Korporat, Prof. Muhamad Jantan to come but after 2.30 p.m., there’s no sign of him so without further hesitation, we invited Prof. OO to the stage and started the whole thing. We have to sing Negaraku without music, the technical difficulty that got me blushing, and En. Saidi talked a lot. And I am lil’ bit disappointed when nobody talked about the sculpture during the gimic, but never mind, at least they saw it. And the best part of all is the theater. I like the concept, and the message, although some people commented what relationship does Rukun Negara have with the theater. But for me it’s still a bomb. And like I said, the moment we walked outside after the theater was over, I was a bit relief. A bit? Yeah, because we thought we have already inserted the resolution from the meja bulat along with the gift inside En. Saidi bag, but we haven’t. I will solve that later.

Although the event finished early, I took time to hang out with my friend before sitting for the test; I deserved to rest after so many hard work okie!!! At 6 p.m., I went to DK R for CMM222 test (that would be Database Design; I’m minoring in Computer Sciences). My comment: It was okie, and I am able to answer a lot, although my answers maybe wrong. But still, I have to satisfy myself with the answers and I’m not even listening to the lecture being held.

Last obstacle: MAT202 test (Introduction to Analysis) and for this test, I am happy with it. Some answers maybe wrong but still, I am happy. Fuh…all tests done, and after that NRIC meeting at Bilik Gerakan (we share the same room with Convex). Last night meeting was attended by our new Project manager, Nik Hussein, and I was bit shocked because they said the new PM is Nur Hazim, the NYDP for MPP 09/10. The meeting was also attended by Wafi, the new YDP for MPPUSM 09/10. By this time, I was a bit sleepy and tired, YES, I AM TIRED, but still in mood for the meeting. Ooh, I didn’t take my bath for the whole day…hahhaa.

Okie lah, that’s was my day for yesterday…

Don’t even know what I wanted to say next so I’m going to leave it like this…

Tada…